


Life Size Ghosts

by Jaina (effervescible)



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Aftermath of Gaslighting, Gen, Identity Issues, Pre-Ending Cutscene, Trick or Treat: Extra Treat, Trick or Treat: Treat, post-kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/effervescible/pseuds/Jaina
Summary: He can't avoid them forever. At the start of his new life in Twilight Town, Roxas sifts through the memories he knows are real and the ones that only feel that way, and whether he can deal with facing the best friends who don't know him.
Relationships: Axel & Roxas & Xion (Kingdom Hearts), Hayner & Olette & Pence & Roxas (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 24
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Life Size Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serie11](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/gifts).



Roxas doesn't come home right away after they defeat Xehanort and his replicas. There were things to see to first — things that the mouse king and the beardy wizard want to talk about, things they have to catch one another up on, and then something that Roxas can only describe as a magic check-up, to make sure Xehanort hasn't left some kind of spell behind that would reveal nasty after-effects later on.

He doesn't object because, well, it makes sense to him, even if nothing they do in the aftermath of the fight feels all that urgent. But you don't just immediately kick back and relax after a heroic victory, right?

(He doesn't actually know and is taking it on faith. He's never saved the worlds before.)

And then there's another kind of check-up, just for him and Xion. Zexion — _Ienzo_ , he has to remind himself — urges them to come to Radiant Garden so that Vexen — _Even_ , it's even harder to remember — can make sure that their new vessels are functioning correctly. Roxas agrees to this, too, albeit with somewhat less enthusiasm, because a replica isn't something you have to find the right fit for like a shoe, is it? It either works or it doesn't, and he's here and can see and hear and talk and touch so it definitely works, doesn't it?

Eventually he and Xion have enough poking and prodding and Axel says _Enough, they're fine, we'll come back if anything weird happens_ And then it's just the three of them, free to decide where they go and how long they stay there. No more missions, no more Organization. He won't admit it to anyone, but part of him feels unsettled by the change. If they can go anywhere and do anything, how did they choose?

A year ago, they'd have turned to Axel for answers. This time, the three of them turn to each other; wherever they go, it will be together. In the end, the choice is obvious. 

The streets of Twilight Town are at the same time somehow exactly the same and very different from how he remembers them. Their first walk around is mostly quiet as they take in all the changes. There's an outdoor theater where an empty lot used to be, a restaurant in place of some unremarkable business Roxas can't recall, but the warm afternoon light lands on the pavement just like he remembers it.

"I missed this place," Xion says hesitantly, "even if it hasn't actually been that long for me. Is that strange?"

"Nah." Axel's smiling, and there's a softness in it Roxas can't remember seeing very often. But he's not looking at the town; he's looking at the two of them. "I feel the same way."

Their first day back is spent finding a place to stay and, of course, having some ice cream. They bring it up to the clock tower like they always used to and spend hours up there like they used to, only it's _better_ now because there's none of the Organization's darkness hanging over their heads.

Their second day is spent mostly on the ground, trying to figure out what they want to do. Get jobs like normal people? Just spend more time hanging out? The question is harder to answer than Roxas would have expected, mostly because he's never had to do it before.

They're in the middle of the downtown shopping district when the number of teenagers around them suddenly rises exponentially. Kids their age flood the area, buying snacks and movie tickets and chattering happily to each other. The sudden change is a little confusing until Axel comments that they must have just gotten out of school.

"Oh!" Xion turns towards him. "Roxas, do you think we should try school too? That's what regular kids do, right?"

Roxas is about to reply when he hears a familiar laugh from not far away, around the curve of the Moogle shop at most, and he can _feel_ himself go white. He knows that laugh. He'd spent almost every day of his only summer vacation with it ringing in his ears. If it's here, if he's here, two other people he thinks he knows well can't be far behind.

He quickly excuses himself, offering a babbled explanation he can barely hear over the sudden ringing in his ears. Xion looks confused as he leaves, and Axel looks far too understanding. He doesn't look back as he strides away, his feet picking up the pace without any conscious decision on his part until he's a block away and _running._

Running to where? Who knows. _Away_ is all that matters right now, and he spends the next couple of hours staying as far away from them as he can. It's easy; he knows exactly where they like to hang out, after all.

From the moment he'd emerged from Sora's heart, his memories and his _self_ fully intact, he'd known what he needed to do — maybe for the first time ever. Memories that he'd forgotten he forgot had risen to the surface and everything clicked into place. Axel and Xion were his best friends; he'd lost them once, but had the chance to get them back and keep them this time; and while he wasn't Sora, not anymore, he was a part of him and that meant he had the chance to be a hero, too, just this once. He knew who he was.

Everything had been so clear. False memories of being another person who'd lacked that clarity seemed to drop away, like skipping stones sinking beneath the waves. It wasn't until he heard Hayner's laugh today that Roxas realized that sense of distance was just as much of an illusion. The memories had always been there, lurking just over his shoulder.

He walks until his feet ache and then he walks some more back to their new place, where his friends already have containers of takeout ready for dinner. He makes a vague excuse for running off and they accept it, though Xion still looks concerned. It's not until afterward, when Axel is taking out the trash and the two of them are busy boxing up the leftovers, that she comes up to him and he realizes she hasn't let it go, she just let it wait.

"Listen, Roxas…" She hesitates. They've always been able to talk to each other, but if this is what he thinks it's about, he doesn't blame her for not knowing what to say. "Axel told me about what happened, after I was...gone. I bet those kids would like to be friends with you for real, here. We could introduce ourselves together, if you want."

He freezes, hands gripping a half-full noodle carton. "No," he says after a moment. "It's okay. It's not like I was really friends with them — not like I was with you and Axel. It was just fake stuff they put in my head." He folds the container flaps closed and tries, really tries, to have a real smile when he looks at her. "I was just surprised today, that's all. I'm fine."

It's meant to reassure one or both of them, but it doesn't ease the troubled look on Xion's face. "Are you really?" she asks. "Roxas, I know better than anyone how memories can affect people. They don't have to be real to mean something to you."

"I really am," he says, and forces himself not to look away. "Thanks. But it's all right."

She's quiet for a long moment. "Okay," she says at last, and doesn't push it farther, then or later that evening.

But they both know he lied.

The next day, Roxas realizes that he still carries more of the Organization's influence than he thought. He's ditched the black coat, but he uses everything else he learned about recon to seek out and follow Hayner, Pence and Olette.

It's not something he plans. But he finds himself awake before Axel or Xion, restless and unable to fall back asleep. And it's a nice day out, a beautiful Saturday morning, so...why not?

His feet take him to the usual spot without him needing to think about it. He doesn't linger on the streets; just like Roxas knows every inch of the walls inside, he knows the rooftops and how every part of the town connects with all the other parts. He makes his way up high, settling on the edge of a building that overlooks the hidden alley. No one's likely to see him unless they make a habit of looking up.

It's a while before he sees anyone else, which he expected — according to his memory, Hayner and Olette, at least, aren't exactly morning people. But his memories also tell him that they're not ones to waste a day without school, and Pence goes where they go, so it's not too much longer before he hears the sound of approaching footsteps and one, two then three duck under the ratty old curtain.

A dull throb builds in his chest. Would they be creeped out, if they realized a stranger was waiting and watching? Probably.  
How long has it been since he thought he spent a week as their best friend? Months, a year? The precise passage of time had faded the longer he'd rested inside Sora's heart, drifting further away from the real world. There were things that he knew when he was set free, certain facts that he must have absorbed from Sora because there was no other way for him to know them, but even then he'd needed others to fill in the blanks. Keeping track of the calendar was apparently not important enough to be part of that innate, inherited knowledge.

They look a little different now, all three of them. Older, maybe? For some reason, the idea unsettles Roxas. Has _he_ grown older at all, without a body to grow in? Will he age in the months to come, or will his replica body reflect his heart at the time they were joined together and no further? Are they already leaving him behind?

He catches himself at that. _Stupid_ , he thinks to himself. They can't leave him behind, because they were never really together. He was an outsider who'd envied how easily they could spend happy days together, and nothing more. He stands to make his way down from the rooftop.

Axel and Xion are surely up and around by now, but he goes wandering instead of heading back. It's not that he thinks they won't understand why this is eating at him — Xion is nothing but understanding, and Axel had been there to see what had been done to him. They'd get it.

His friends aren't the problem. He is.

The woods beyond the formerly broken wall (seriously, who decided it was a good idea to repair a perfectly convenient hole like that?) take more effort to get to now, but there are still Heartless lurking among the trees. Roxas is glad to see them, because they give him a simple and convenient outlet for his emotions. And _this_ part, at least, is still the same — Oathkeeper and Oblivion slice through them like they're nothing, and for a while he forgets himself in the combat. He lets his body and his instincts lead the way, striking down Shadow after Shadow and going deeper and deeper into the forest until the trees grow sparser. He's come out the other side.

The old mansion looms before him in a way that doesn't match its actual size. In his memory it's bigger, more ominous, a portent of doom instead of a run-down old building that someone once called home. A sick feeling settles in his gut, but he doesn't turn away. Transfixed, he keeps moving forward until he's in the middle of the clearing, staring up at the place where his first life ended.

The strength seems to go out of his legs and, absently, he plops to the ground. He'd known it was here, of course. No reason to think someone would have torn it down after it had clearly been abandoned for years already. He hadn't thought about it at all, really. 

Roxas lets out a shaky sigh. Maybe it was inevitable, he thinks. Everything he once knew ended here. If they're beginning a new life, maybe it needed to start with him coming here to come to terms with an old one.

It's just — he scrubs a hand through his hair — he feels like two people at the same time, one overlaid on the other like an error on a photo negative. But right now is the first time that's not true. Back then it had been, whether he counted himself and Sora, or the him who'd lived his real life and the him who thought he lived the life DiZ had given him.

But he hadn't felt it. All he'd felt was his life falling apart. 

He lets out a shaky sigh as he wraps his arms around his knees. Now that he remembers everything, now that he knows he was always so different from the normal guy who lived in a normal town on a normal summer vacation, why is he still hung up on those six days? Why do his feelings for imaginary friends still matter when he's got his real ones back?

It's almost funny; back when he was part of the Organization, the others would have called the feeling of friendship he had for Axel and Xion fake. He wasn't supposed to be able to feel anything at all, but he did. And now, the feelings he has for Hayner, Pence and Olette _are_ fake, or are at least based on something fake, but they feel just as real.

If they're going to stay here, make Twilight Town their home base even if they visit other worlds (does that mean they'll RTTT at the end of the day?), then he's going to run into them eventually. It's not a big enough place for him to be able to avoid them forever.

Then what? Does he explain that he remembers being lifelong best friends with them in another reality, so they should be friends in this one too? He shakes his head. He doesn't remember that, not really. When he thinks back to the days when he was an oblivious prisoner, he doesn't have invented recollections of the first time he met them all or the first time he beat Hayner at Struggle or even why they became friends. However they'd reprogrammed him to believe he belonged, it wasn't detailed enough to produce a lifetime of false memories. It was just effective enough to make him feel like he was happy by their side, and not to question why.

He still feels that way, no matter how many questions he has now.

With a sigh, he pushes himself to his feet, brushing grass off his pants. Feeling sorry for himself won't fix anything. He's got his truest, most precious memories of Axel and Xion, and they've finally got the chance to build a better future together. That's almost everything he's ever wanted. If these other manufactured emotions won't go away, well, there are worse things.

He'll go find them and they'll go wandering some more, and eventually they'll run into Hayner, Pence and Olette, who won't know him. Roxas will smile anyway and introduce himself and maybe they'll become friends anyway, not best friends but good enough, and he'll be able to push the past away. It'll have to be enough.

"Roxas?"

He goes very, very still, hardly daring to breathe before swiveling in a jerky motion to face the entrance to the woods. Hayner, Pence and Olette are right there, staring at him with just as much surprise and twice the uncertainty.

Apparently, eventually is right now.

"Roxas?" Hayner repeats himself, and a wide grin lights up his whole face. "It is you! Whoa!"

They run up to him to surround him in a semi-circle as he tries to think of something, anything, to say that makes sense. This was never going to be easy, but he'd expected to be able to plan for the conversation. Instead he's at a loss for words, while they're easily able to pepper him with questions.

"Have you been in Twilight Town long? Wait, did you just get here?"

"Where were you, anyway?"

"Did Sora find you?"

"Sora?" he repeats dumbly, and things start to click into place. His other half had never given up on him, and he'd been here, and he'd felt what Roxas had felt. It makes sense that he'd have told them something about him.

"Yeah, he was here trying to find you," Pence confirms. "So we helped. Man, I thought it would be a lot harder than just walking out of the woods!"

"You helped," he says, and he needs to stop repeating things and add something new to the discussion. "But you didn't even know me."

"Well, yeah," Hayner says, giving him a look that says _you dummy_ and _haven't you been paying attention at all_ and he _feels_ like he's gotten it a hundred times before. "But the other us did, right? In the other Twilight Town!"

"You know about that?!"

Olette nods and reaches into her bag, shuffling around for a moment before pulling out two pictures. Roxas knows, before he even looks, what they are; two photos of a group of best friends, gathered on this very spot. One with him, and one without him.

"He showed us the other photo," she says. "That helped us figure out that there were really two Twilight Towns. And once we realized the boy in the photo was real, we thought we could be friends with you in this one, too."

"I know it's weird, but it just felt right," Pence adds.

"Yeah. It does," Roxas says quietly. He looks at the photos for a moment more before handing them back and meeting their eyes, one after the other. "I never thought I'd get to see you guys again."

"Well, you did, dummy!" Hayner throws an arm around his shoulders in a half-hug, half-precursor-to-a-noogie, only a shadow of uncertainty in his expression hinting that he hasn't done this before. Roxas has to laugh a little, if only out of sheer relief.

"So what happened?" Pence asks, that familiar eagerness at the prospect of unraveling a good mystery evident on his face. " _Did_ Sora find you?"

"Something like that," Roxas says. Truthfully, Sora had always known where he was — but that doesn't change the fact that Roxas had been lost. "He helped me find my way back here."

"And he didn't tell us?" Hayner scowls and folds his arms over his chest. "Sheesh. I'd have thought he'd let us know."

"Maybe Ienzo sent us a message," Olette suggests. "That's what we're here for, right?"

"What?" Roxas blinks. "You know Ienzo?"

"Kind of. We talked to him through the computer in the mansion," Pence says. "It's been a while, though, so we decided to try to reach him today." He grins. "But it looks like we don't need to."

The computer. He swallows hard. "Can you show me?"

The inside of the mansion is just like he remembers. Even motes of dust seem to hang in the exact same spots in the air, which is just as musty and stagnant as he recalls, at least until they make their way downstairs to the hidden basement, where it's just as dim but cleaner and somehow more alive.

Everything is the same, except for the computer. Instead of a heap of scrap that will never, ever work again after he smashed it apart in a grief-stricken rage, it's completely intact. Judging by the little lights and whirring sounds it makes, it's still fully capable of fulfilling its user's commands.

"I didn't expect it to still be here," he says. "I broke it in the other Twilight Town." He shakes his head. "I guess it makes sense, though. They were never the same."

Hayner, Pence and Olette exchange glances. "What is the other Twilight Town, anyway?" Olette asks gently. "We figured out that it existed, but not what that meant."

"It's really weird, if you think about it," Pence adds. "But weird things happen a lot around here."

He hesitates. "I'm not sure how to explain it."

"C'mon, man," Hayner says. "You were our friend, right? You can tell us anything."

It's not what they say but how they say it that makes him crack. They've hardly spent any time with him but they talk like it's a foregone conclusion, like they're old friends who just need to catch up and that's that. They look at him and they _see_ him, an actual person who's part of their world and not a shadow lurking at the border.

It all comes spilling out, as much as it can without hours and hours to tell full the tale of his life. How he's more than just connected to Sora because once he _was_ Sora, at least a part of him. How he'd been thrust into existence without warning or memory, and became part of the group in the black coats because there was nowhere else for him to be. He'd fought for them because they asked him to and fought for his friends because he wanted to; he'd left because he had to, but before he could even decide what to do next, someone had taken him and locked him away in the most effective type of prison, where he didn't even realize he was trapped.

And they'd been there. And he'd been happy, for a while, before he lost them and then lost himself. Thanks to Sora, he'd found himself again, but he still hasn't had time to decide what comes next.

By the time he finishes, his words trailing off to silence instead of a conclusion that doesn't exist, they've all drifted to the floor, seated in a loose circle.

"That's….awful," Pence says, sounding faintly horrified.

"The other Twilight Town isn't real?" Olette sounds sadder than upset, but her eyes flick to the computer nervously. "It was just a computer simulation?"

"It felt real to me," Roxas says quietly. "But that was what was supposed to happen. The whole point of trapping me there. Either way, it doesn't affect you guys. You aren't...obligated to be friends with me."

Getting the words out is like pulling his own teeth, but he has to say it. If he doesn't, what makes him different from anyone who wanted him to live his life according to someone else's expectations?

"Forget that," Hayner says, jumping to his feet and interrupting anything further Roxas could add. "You're our friend now and it doesn't matter what some creepy jerks think. Got it?"

He blinks. "What?"

"Look," Hayner says, and there's a visible shift in his demeanor as he realizes all three of them are staring at him. Not embarrassment, exactly, but a little sheepishness. "Maybe the other Twilight Town isn't real, but this one definitely is, and this is where we heard about you and decided we wanted to meet you. That's what our hearts told us, and no one's going to tell _my_ heart what's right or not."

"He's right," Olette adds. "We all felt it."

"Besides, even if you only knew computer-us, if we were that similar then that's proof we could have a lot of fun together," Pence says. "It'd stink if you came here and we didn't even try."

Once again, he's left without words. It matters a little less though, Roxas thinks, because he can feel that they're right. He used to think it was Sora who had the power to make such strong connections between hearts. Maybe, at least this one time, it's something he inherited. "Okay," he says, and gets to his feet.

"Great!" Hayner grins, and it's the same smile that Roxas feels like he's seen over and over but knows he hasn't. This time, the thought doesn't hurt so much, because he knows it's real. And so is his answering smile. "Ice cream, then?" he suggests. "We've got to kick off this friendship with something good."

"That works for me," Roxas says, and when he swings his forearm out, he knows that Hayner's will be there to bump against it. And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Trick or Treat! Your letter didn't touch on HPO, but Roxas "figuring out what it means to be whole" sent my brain down this track, and I thought it'd be all right as an extra treat fic. I hope you enjoy.


End file.
